


Tearing at the Air

by Canarii



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Supernatural
Genre: Everything is little red riding hood, F/M, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Supernatural AU: Croatoan/End'verse, This ship is weird but perfect, emotionally damaged millionaire otp, hellhounds ate my baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-27
Updated: 2013-09-27
Packaged: 2017-12-27 18:18:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/982102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canarii/pseuds/Canarii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She doesn't remember much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tearing at the Air

The army styled cots the camp supplied were really never meant for two people, but they make do. It’s all limbs and joints and puzzle pieces, they stagger their shoulders, but then her feet dip off the end. There’s no perfect solution, not without overlapping , so to speak. Close but not too close, as always.

His breathing comes in a low, even pace beside her, but she can’t be sure he’s asleep. She still finds it hard to sleep, and watches the candles burning down low on the table with half lidded eyes.

The fire’s burnt down, just coals smouldering away, adding another point of flickering amber light to the room. It’s just enough to see by, yet somehow the darkness was no less absolute.

Bela rolled over on her side, facing her current bedmate. Oliver certainly looked asleep, shadows dancing across the contours of his face from the shifting light, eyes closed. The candle flames’ light gleamed off of shiny tissue, drawing her gaze despite herself.

She tried not to stare at his scars much, she could tell how uncomfortable it made him. But it was difficult not to, the paths of pain marked out on a map of skin in so many rivers and ranges that it seemed impossible to belong to any one person. Scars were not part of her world, not the one she’d been born to, belonged to. She’d only ever had one of consequence in all her life before. A tiny white line just under her chin, from when she’d fallen off a horse when she was nine. That was gone now, she’d been brought back in new skin, perfect, untouched. But she’d never worn the marks of her wars as freely as some. _That’s what I look like on the inside._

"Like what you see?" How that man could manage to look smug with his eyes shut, she’d never understand. So, not asleep, after all.

"No", she scowled, "I’m thinking of trading you in."

"Can’t, I’m one of a kind."

"Aren’t you just", she smiled, a small gesture in the dark, falling unseen on closed lashes.

"You know", he ventured, opening his eyes finally, and propping himself up on one elbow, "I hear talking about things helps."

"What’s there to talk about?" It’s pointless evasion, she knows what he means, just as he knows she knows. Those are they circles they dance in, silent truths and thin lies.

"What’s keeping you up at night."

"You know I don’t remember that." "You remember something." He’s speaking in that tone of his, low, soft, like coaxing a half wild animal out from under a sofa. She supposed she was still a bit feral, in many ways, maybe always would be. _And does that make you Sigfried or Roy, Mr. Queen?_

She rolled onto her back, an excuse not to look him in the eyes. The cabin’s wood ceiling above disappeared into the shadows the scant candlelight couldn’t penetrate. Pure dark. They never talked details, about the island, about Hell. They didn’t ask. She saw his scars, and he saw hers.

"Bits and pieces", she admitted, "More like..flashes. Enough to know…it happened. Just not what." She can see him nod out of the corner of her vision, a shape moving in the half light.

“I remember-” Yes, that was clear as yesterday, but she didn’t- she shouldn’t-. But he’s pushing, and it’s not the first time. "I remember dying."

She physically feels him tense up beside her, but it’s too late to take it back. He’d asked.

"I thought it would be quicker. I mean, I suppose it was, technically. Must have been over in twenty seconds, maximun, but when they’re the last twenty seconds of your life…well. It feels longer."

It’s easy, lying there in the black, with nothing but the burning down flickers of candlelight to remember that night. It had been raining, windowpanes mirroring her cheeks as the minutes clicked down. She remembers the fear, the base, heart thumping screaming prey fear that only came with knowing that there was no escape from the big bad wolf. She swallows, and it brings back echoes of wet breathlessness.

"You can’t see hellhounds", she continued, closing her eyes, "But you can hear them…feel them."

The smell of ash and decay that came with them, their breath so hot it misted in the air, even with no visible bodies, the howling- god the howling. The memory of the pack baying for her blood had kept her up more nights than she’d care to remember.

He’s dead silent beside her, and she knows she’s gone too far. Wandered to close an an edge there’s no coming back from. But he’d asked, so she’d tell. Sometimes honesty was not all it was cracked up to be.

"It was ridiculous, really", she can hear her voice from somewhere far away, cracking, with something like attempted humour, a sick hysterical chuckle fighting it’s way up, "The first one knocked me down and-", she crooked her fingers on her right hand into a claw, holding it up to the candle, and it’s twisted shadow writhed on the walls.

"-all I could think was-" The first two ‘claws’ lower to rest at her ribs, just below her left breast,

“-granny, what-“, Her nails run rough, in slow jerky strokes from rib to navel,

“-big claws-“ From navel to hipbone, clear across her lower abdomen,

“- you have.” Her grip softens, and almost dreamily she runs one finger back up her torso, weaving over ribs, bisecting her heart, slipping over collarbones to rest at the pulse of her throat.

"And what big teeth." She’d hardly felt any pain, it was all too fast, too…hot. She doesn’t tell him that the fangs and talons of the hounds are white hot, cauterizing the wounds even as they’re inflicted.

She doesn’t tell him that she heard her blood sizzling even as she drowned in it, throat torn open. Silence. Stunned silence? Horrified? Disgusted?

"You asked", she reminded him, and rolled over to face the wall, before he could see that she’d started to cry. _I thought I could be brave. I wasn’t._


End file.
